Aristotle, Mechanica, Paris, 1599, old vellum

Aristotle

Mechanica graeca, emendata, latina facta, et commentariis illustrata ab Henrico Monantholio. Paris: Jerome Perier, 1599

4to (224 x 156mm.), title printed in red and black with woodcut device, parallel text in Greek and Latin, woodcut initials and headpieces, woodcut diagrams (1 full-page), old vellum, later green paper spine label (torn), lower hinge broken, covers slightly warped

This text, the earliest Greek work of mechanics, is not considered to be by Aristotle himself, and it has been suggested the author is Archytas of Tarentum (Thomas N. Winter, "The Mechanical Problems in the Corpus of Aristotle", 2007, introduction). The Greek text first appeared as part of the Aldine Aristotle, but by the mid-sixteenth century it was of more interest to scientists (including Tartaglia and, later, Galileo) than scholars of Greek.

The editor, Henri de Monantheuil (1536-1606), was a pupil of Ramus and the author of works on mathematics. "On the whole, Monantheuil's is the most complete and erudite of the sixteenth-century commentaries on the Mechanica, though not the most original in outlook" (P.L. Rose and S. Drake, "The Mechanica in the Renaissance", Studies in the Renaissance, 1971, 65-104, p.100).

The full-page woodcut depicts the moving of the Vatican obelisk in 1585.

LITERATURE

USTC 146709